Cub (2015) - Blu-ray Review

Details: By Loron Hays; 22 August 2015

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Fuck the great outdoors, man. I’m staying inside forever.

Cub, the debut feature of Flemish filmmaker Jonas Govaerts, is as violent and as desperate as an overnight Cub Scout camping trip should NEVER get. Throw out any preconceptions you might have about boy scouts and children in general because Govaerts and co-writer Roel Mondelaers are going to rewrite the book on exactly what it means to be a survivor of adolescence. This is definitely smarter than your average horror film and my fellow Hounds of Horror will appreciate that fact.

It’s William Golding’s Lord of the Flies meets Lucky McKee’s The Woman as these poor cub scouts have to deal with booby-trapped forest, a psychopath, a cruel scout leader, his vicious dog, AND a feral boy (Gill Eeckelaert) wearing a bizarrely horned mask made from blackened tree bark. Frightened yet? You should at least be on the edge of your seat because the strange events in the movie will never see you relaxed; go ahead and move now. Talk about a perfect storm of ruthless madness and, yes, that’s exactly what the picture becomes as, literally, no one is safe in these dense woods. Not that they weren’t warned…

Rising (and already well-respected) cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis (The Drop, Bullhead) brings out the beauty in all the horror with this expertly shot film. Obviously Spielberg and Carpenter were heavily studied for this shoot. Rarely will woods this thick surprise in their wicked beauty and shock with what is revealed.

There is danger in every step as this group of boys and their three leaders – Baloo (Stef Aerts), Akela (Titus De Voogdt) and the object of every boy’s affection, Jasmijn (Evelien Bosmans) – descend into the murky territory of a half boy, half werewolf creature. But does he really exist? Baloo likes to scare the scouts with stories of him. Akela permits it and, dawning a mask, participates in scaring the group. And Jasmijn does nothing to stop it.

Soon enough, the good times, rolling out like they do in The Goonies, are over. The typical pranks subside and the scouts gather round to sing their praises to a protector above. It is then, when the sun descends into the ether that they begin to recognize that something, well, many things are just not quite right. The innocence is over. Shadows move. And Sam (Maurice Luijten) knows there is something out there; something that shouldn’t be there. We know it, too. But this Flemish flick isn’t satisfied with only one anomaly creeping beneath the Wallonia undergrowth. Why would it be when there could (and probably is) so much more hidden in the deep, dark woods?

And just like that, poor Sam’s narrative thread is unspooled. He is the unfortunate easy target no more and Kai, the watcher in the woods, provides the spark that lights a fire inside. Let the brutality begin as these hunger games are anything but PG-13. Blood and bone come flying toward Karakatsanis’ camera as the boys, their scouts, and a dark secret – darker than the woods around them, in fact – are all dealt with in Cub. And, hell, we haven’t EVEN gotten to Jan Hammenecker’s role as the spectacularly creepy Poacher or the hypnotic synth score from Zombi’s Steve Moore…

Cub, with its exquisite use of the vicious natural world and all its inherent threats, proves that outer space – as famously promised in Ridley Scott’s Alien – isn’t the only place where your screams won’t be heard. The woods, man, the woods. The deeper in, the further out.

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[tab title="Film Details"]

MPAA Rating: Not rated.
Runtime: 84 mins
Director: Jonas Govaerts
Writer: Jonas Govaerts, Roel Mondelaers
Cast: Maurice Luijten, Evelien Bosmans, Titus De Voogdt
Genre: Horror
Tagline: Cub
Memorable Movie Quote: "."
Distributor: Artspoitation Films
Official Site: http://www.cubthemovie.com/
Release Date: No theatrical release
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: August 18, 2015
Synopsis: Over-imaginative 12 year-old Sam heads off to the woods to summer scout camp with his pack convinced he will encounter a monster...and he does.

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[tab title="Blu-ray Review"]

Cub (2015) - Blu-ray Review

Blu-ray Details:

Available on Blu-ray - August 18, 2015
Screen Formats: 2.39:1
Subtitles:
Audio:
Discs: 50GB Blu-ray Disc; Single disc (1 BD)
Region Encoding: A

Released on blu-ray courtesy of Artsploitation Films, Cub is a glorious feast for the eyes and the ears. Full of deep shadows and thick woods, the 1080p transfer is sheer art. Colors are appropriately saturated and edges never blur or blend throughout. Black levels are strong but deep. Everything is crisp and detailed and full of life. There is a lot of darkness throughout the adventure but there is no fault in the transfer; no waver at all. The sound – presented here in Dolby Digital 5.1 – is expressive and immersive and perfectly complements the picture.

Supplements:

Commentary:

None

Special Features:

Finally someone uses CGI correctly. As evidenced here by a seriously strong featurette, the VFXs are broken down by the filmmakers to show where and when and how they were tastefully used. There are also two deleted scenes, the music video for a Deadsets song that Govaerts directed and, Of Cats & Women, a 13-minute horror short he directed. Good stuff.